The Images of Research (IoR) exhibition, run by the University of Northampton Graduate School, will open in the Avenue Gallery corridor on January 31st 2018 from 5pm and will stay there until February 23rd. After this it will travel to Park Campus, to be displayed on the ground floor of Rockingham Library then at Avenue Library […]

Blog Archives

“Some of you will already know that I have been looking into alternatives to Global Business Browser. This resource has served us well for many years but, more recently, has not been meeting the needs of students quite as well as it used to.

Orbis

Following a trial of Bureau Van Dijk’s database Orbis, this has now been purchased as a (partial) replacement for Global Business Browser. This database provides in depth financial data in relation to very large global companies. To enhance the content on this database, I have also subscribed to the EIU Market Indicators and Forecasts component.

Where do you go when you want to learn a new skill or improve your competency? Sign up to a practical, hands-on workshop? Or look online?

Whilst there is no substitute for attending a good skills development workshop, face-to-face learning is not always possible for a whole host of reasons – accessibility, time, family commitments. We all know how good YouTube is for learning ‘ordinary stuff’ but, increasingly, postgraduate students can find some valuable skills development resources online, such as via MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Why not check out some of these resources below? Read the rest of this entry →

As a librarian, when I need to conduct a literature review I go first to NELSON, to interrogate the library’s subscription databases. From there I may try the individual databases that are most relevant to my subject (Web of Science, Emerald and so forth), and after that to CORE, to pick up the open access literature.

The advantage of using CORE is that it usually returns a number of results that haven’t appeared elsewhere. This is not only because CORE’s coverage is immense (just under 25 million open access articles) but also because the content it harvests is not restricted to the peer reviewed journal literature: CORE also has research reports, books, conference papers, theses and a host of other grey literature.

Library and Learning Services (LLS) has recently acquired three new e-book packages from major publishers, which together provide access to more than 21,000 e-book titles. All the titles are digital rights management (DRM) free, provide simultaneous multi-user access and are available via single sign-on through NELSON and the library catalogue.

Scholarly Systems Manager Mike Aynsworth explains the work his team has been doing to improve access to library resources:

Work has been carried out to make off campus access to the major library databases the same as on campus access. This has been achieved by using Ezproxy, an authentication service which mimics on campus access for those using resources off campus. Read the rest of this entry →

Thank you to all the new research students who worked so hard in today’s session in the library.

Given how many tools we covered in the morning, I thought it might be helpful to provide a list of these, with links, so you can revisit them later at your leisure. You’ll see that there are a few extra tools that were mentioned today but not explored.

The library has just purchased WARC, a database of brand case studies, campaign videos, articles and trends.

Over 8500 WARC case studies can be searched by industry sector, country, region, campaign objective, media and more. Articles and research papers are grouped into 80+ topics ranging from alcoholic drinks to utilities and WARC guides include company profiles, best practice articles and briefings on communications and branding.

Those of you who prefer to access the library’s electronic databases directly via their native interfaces may be interested to know that the library’s A-Z list of databases has had something of a makeover.

The original alphabetically arranged list is still there, but now you can filter the list by resource name. There is also a new ‘Subjects & categories‘ classification so it is easier to find the most appropriate resources for your discipline.

Hannah Rose, Academic Librarian for Education, tells me that the British Education Index has just moved to the EBSCO platform. In addition, we also now have access to three other resources as part of our subscription: